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The Dirt on Aaron Paul

Breaking Bad's back, and with it, the overwhelming evidence that Aaron Paul is one of the best young actors in the biz. So why can't this guy get a new job? And why is he so fired up about the episode they just filmed? And why is Nick Offerman walking through this hotel lobby smacking his gut? A couple hours and a half-dozen beers with AP on the verge of the biggest, baddest, darkest season yet

Chances are good that if you got a first-taste-is-free bump of Breaking Bad sometime in the past four years, the days subsequent sorta blended into a sunlight-free marathon—not unlike one of Jesse Pinkman’s parties. After all, the effect of BB, entering the first half of its final season Sunday, is one of, well, addictive intensity. And at its split-lip, manipulated core is Aaron Paul, who plays meth dealer Pinkman. In late May, when Paul and I find the best place at his midtown Manhattan hotel to grab beers, he’s still riding high from the episode they’ve just wrapped. He can’t stop talking about it—if in a vague, un-spoilery way. He’s in town for this fashion shoot, and an hour before we’re scheduled to meet, I swing by GQ HQ to re-watch some AP scenes. It’s a Saturday, lotsa empty cubes, no one around. In my office, I find a few Jesse Pinkman gems—his quavering invective against his Narcotics Anonymous group, stretches from the episode in season two where he babysits the son of a meth-sizzled couple. Some real spew-hurling, not-low-volume monologues. When the first clip ends, I hear something ghostly—the same voice on the other side of the wall. Paul, it turns out, is in the office, getting fitted for the shoot. I wonder if he can hear himself as clearly through the wall as I can hear him. I also wonder if I should head into the fashion closet, shake his hand, and say "Yo." (Get it? That’d sure win some points, huh?) Then we could, what—suspend our conversation until the designated hour? Or maybe stroll through Times Square and hope he’s not distracted by the Ferris wheel in Toys ’R’ Us?

I get the hell out of there instead, meet him at the hotel later, say hello in the least nobbish manner possible, and dig in on the topic he so clearly, almost brimmingly, wants to hit. We’re scheduled to sit for thirty minutes and grab burgers, or something. But the burger place is filled with Swedes with fanny packs, and too loud anyway, so we head to the bar. A couple hours later, when Paul fights me over the tab, I chalk up the willingness of AP to go several rounds on a sunny spring afternoon to the fact that I lead not with "Yo" in the office, but with something he actually wants to talk about, and over beers, too:

GQ: How do they roll the scripts out to you guys? On first read is it always: "Holy shit. Look at this"?

** Aaron Paul: **Oh yeah. We’re only given one script at a time, so I’m always just dying to read the next episode. But now that we can see the finish line, it’s bittersweet. I’m happy they’re not going to stretch out the storyline, but it’s also very sad that, you know, I’ll never play Jesse Pinkman again.

GQ: So, you guys are splitting the final season into two halves, eight and eight—and you’re taking a little break after you wrap the first eight.

** Aaron Paul: **Yeah, we take a four-month break. And then we shoot a final eight episodes which will air sometime in 2013.

GQ: What are you getting, by the way? Twelve-dollar beer?

** Aaron Paul: **Maybe a $12 beer. Jeez. You know what? I’m going to do a $9 beer. I’m going to get an Amstel Light.

GQ: You’re rolling out some small films this summer, but you must be lining up all sorts of work.

** Aaron Paul: **You’d think so, right? I have no idea. I just roll with it. It’s strange that I’m going to be unemployed very soon.

GQ: That’s sort of hard to imagine, that you don’t have scripts stacked ceiling-high on your bedside table.

** Aaron Paul: **Yeah, it’s kind of hard for me to swallow. When I first started, I just wanted to work. I wouldn’t necessarily do anything, but I’d pretty much almost do anything at the very beginning. And then the more I started to work, the pickier I became, and now with this show that I’m working on now, it’s just—it’s hard to say yes to projects. Breaking Bad, I’ve never been more proud.

GQ: That’s gotta be a big difference between maybe some of the other young actors working right now, that they know what they’re doing is something that they’re going to outgrow. Whereas this... I mean, in the media machine, which is not nothing, Breaking Bad seems to have made a case for top TV billing.

** Aaron Paul: **We’ve gotten so much love. It’s totally insane. Some people call this the best show that has ever existed. And then when people compare our show to The Wire—I mean, that just says it all.

GQ: It seemed like everyone I know sort of binged to catch up on Breaking Bad over the last year or two, and watched the whole series in one go. Do you hear from fans that they’re watching the show that way?

** Aaron Paul: **All the time. People have come up to me saying, "I’ve watched all four seasons in four days." And I’m like, "Well, that’s impossible." But people assure me they really do it.

GQ: How do Vince [Gilligan, creator] and the writers feel about that?

** Aaron Paul: **They’re proud, but it also puts a lot of pressure on them, because they want to keep producing that kind of quality.

GQ: I feel like really since the end of season one, almost every single episode just gradually ratchets up, each more intense than the last. Without giving away whatever you can’t give away, does it—

** Aaron Paul: **Jesse dies.

GQ: Right, exactly. Jesse dies in between; season starts with a casket. But things are keeping pace?

** Aaron Paul: **They are. They just keep raising the bar; they really do, I can honestly say that.

GQ: Do you notice differences on set in like, craft services, or is it all—

** Aaron Paul: **No, we’re still eating our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. That said, this episode that we just did is definitely the biggest one we’ve ever done.

GQ: And...

** Aaron Paul: **It seemed like we were working on a pretty big-budget film. It was the first time they took us away on location. Like, we were shooting in Santa Fe—set us all up, set the entire crew up at the hotels in Rock City.

GQ: Is it the case that AMC is pumping more money into this season? Or is it just a matter of figuring out where to spend?

** Aaron Paul: **Yeah, I think it’s just a matter of figuring out where to spend. There are certain things that are happening that we’re just shooting in the middle of nowhere. It’s just big; it’s just bigger this year.

GQ: Have you gone back and watched certain scenes over and over again?

** Aaron Paul: **I haven’t. When it’s all done, I think I’m going to, but I haven’t seen the first season since it aired.

GQ: Do you have a ritual for watching on Sundays?

** Aaron Paul: **No, but my family in Idaho, they have a Breaking Bad night every Sunday. My parents will watch each episode four or five times.

GQ: Upload the monologues to YouTube.

** Aaron Paul: **I’m sure they’re all coming from my parents.

GQ: You moved from Idaho to Hollywood when you were 17. You said you’d take almost any work back then, but what sorts of shows were you really gunning for?

** Aaron Paul: **The first part of my career, how I was paying the bills was commercials. I was just doing tons of commercials. But I grew up watching The Wonder Years, that was my favorite show. I wanted to do something like that: something special, something unique and honest. One of my first jobs was the original 90210. The very next week, I got a phone call with an offer to do an episode of Melrose Place. Small little tiny role, but I thought, "My god, my career is taking off. This is amazing." And then I didn’t work like, four or five months.

GQ: Was there a recurring role producers wanted you for?

** Aaron Paul: **I think at the beginning, it was all kind of mid. But kind of just like, a loud crazy guy. Now, everyone wants me to play the loveable drug addict, which honestly—I want to try and steer as far away from that as possible. "Yes, we know he’s a drug addict, but he’s a drug addict with a heart of gold!" Jesse’s been so much fun to play, but... _Look at this guy! What are you doing? _

_Atmospheric breaks in conversation to describe the way the light’s coming through the window, or whatever, are usually gratuitous, but I hope this one’s worth it. Nick Offerman—whom you may know from Parks and Recreation, and this—skates across the tile of the lobby bar and sits with us. ("This is great," Aaron says. "Nick Offerman walks by, joins us, eats some nuts with us.") Nick and Aaron proceed to scheme for ten minutes about how they might get into tonight’s SNL finale, Kristen Wiig’s last show. It’s one of those exchanges where you realize the rungs of the Hollywood fame ladder are more spaced out, and greater in number, than it appears from where you and I stand. It’s a trick of perspective. There’re gaps between these guys, and plenty above them. "It’s crazy," Nick says. "Bill Hader owes me his firstborn male child, and he didn’t return my call. He finally replied: ’No tickets.’ Everybody said no, and then Fred Armisen got me in." Aaron angles for other ins in the least obtrusive manner imaginable, but no luck. Doesn’t sound like he’s got a leg to stand on. _

GQ: What was the break before Breaking Bad?

** Aaron Paul: **I think when I got a semi-regular gig on Big Love. I’d never really played kind of a straight and narrow—but so many people just thought my character on that show was so creepy. I think it was really because of the way they did my hair. I looked like a creepy pedophile. But he was truly a nice guy trying to help out Amanda Seyfried, you know?

GQ: With Breaking Bad, I’ve heard again and again that Vince’s original intention was for you to be finished after one season. Then something happened—you were good!—and so the plan shifted.

** Aaron Paul: **Well, I never knew that the original idea was to kill off Jesse. I had no idea. So my first meeting was—I mean, it was probably the sixth or seventh pilot that I read that season. First one that I went out for. But when I read it, I was like, AMC? They’re doing original programming? I thought they only played old Westerns. But it was hands-down the best pilot that I’ve ever read. In all honesty, I didn’t think it would see the light of day, because you don’t see stuff like that on TV.

GQ: Has Vince ever told you what it was that made him pick you for the role?

** Aaron Paul: **My extreme charm is what he constantly tells me, every day. "Wow, you are so charming. It’s unbelievable how charming you are." No, I don’t know. We just hit it off.

GQ: Was Bryan [Cranston, co-star] set already?

** Aaron Paul: **He was already set. I thought I was going to read with him, but I guess he just didn’t want to read with me. So we all ate lunch together instead, and just really hit it off. And then during shooting—the first scene, there was just something special there, something magical. It was all good on the page, but I think once they saw it brought to life by us, they just were like, "Huh. That’s interesting. We should roll with it." They loved the whole butting-head element, the odd-couple tug-of-war relationship that we had, and they wanted to keep going.

GQ: You and Bryan, in interviews I’ve seen you guys do—even after the Emmys, for example [Bryan has won three for his role on BB, and Aaron has won one]—it seems that you have just an incredibly strong friendship.

** Aaron Paul: **We do. And I’ll be honest: I was a decent actor before. I’m not going to beat myself up, but I—you can always learn. But after working on Breaking Bad, it’s like going to an extreme acting workshop every day. Working with Bryan, he’s just—he’s on such a different level than me.

_Break #2: Nick Offerman walks back through the lobby bar, lifts his shirt, and starts slapping his gut—big, percussive mating-call thwacks that draw eyes from all corners. The lobby-bar patrons sitting across from us, fitted in pre-Broadway-show formals, melt into their chairs. "It’s okay everybody," Aaron says, "it’s just Nick Offerman. It’s just Nick Offerman." And then he’s gone. _

GQ: What’s the hardest scene you’ve had to shoot for the show?

** Aaron Paul: **A lot of them are so hard. But I think it’s hardest with stuff that obviously has never happened to me, like with Jesse waking up to his girlfriend lying dead next to him. Fortunately there weren’t too many takes, but you still have to do at least one from each angle. That was a rough day, you know? I was just crying and freaking out the entire time.

GQ: If you’re not in a scene, do you ever stand behind the camera?

** Aaron Paul: **Oh yeah. I go to set all the time, even when I’m off, just to see the thing played out. And we’re so fortunate, because we get the greatest directors to come shoot for our show. Because everybody wants to, and it’s phenomenal. So I love watching how the different directors handle the different takes, and scenes, and episodes. We definitely have a specific kind of DNA that our show produces, but everyone has their own take. Like, we just had Rian Johnson [director of this fall’s Looper] back, who I so look up to. He did our bottle episode two seasons ago.

GQ: "Fly," right? That was a crazy episode.

** Aaron Paul: **People either loved it, or they absolutely hated it. There’s nothing in between—it’s like, either their favorite episode or "My god, what were you thinking?" But what he did with that episode was incredible. And as a bottle episode, it was really just to save money.

GQ: What about non-acting? What are you into?

** Aaron Paul: **Well, I’m getting married—

GQ: That’s right!

** Aaron Paul: **That’s taking up a lot of my time, which is so fun. She’s the greatest woman that has ever existed—no offense to other women on this planet, but she is hands-down the best.

GQ: What’s the difference between really liking someone and knowing-knowing?

** Aaron Paul: **Well, we’d met at Coachella, became friends. And then a year later, we fell in love at Coachella. We ran off together at Coachella. You know, first kiss on the Ferris wheel sort of thing.

GQ: Wait, literally?

** Aaron Paul: **Yeah.

GQ: I thought that that was, like, a euphemism.

** Aaron Paul: **Yeah, it was great. But you know when people say, "When you know, you know"? It was crazy. The moment that happened—even leading up to the kiss on the Ferris wheel, I couldn’t imagine myself being without her. Because just the idea of doing this all the time was such a fantasy of mine—I was like, "Wait, can this actually exist?" I don’t know—maybe this is just one those crazy, whirlwind Coachella romances that you always hear about.

GQ: You’re big into music.

** Aaron Paul: **Yeah, that might be the reason why I don’t really work that much: I’m obsessed with concerts.

GQ: What’s the most memorable concert you’ve been to the last couple years?

** Aaron Paul: **Lauren and I saw Bright Eyes at the Cemetery. I love watching concerts at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. In the summer, they’ve started doing a concert series. It’s great, because you bring your own picnic basket, big blanket, wine. My girl, she is very proud of her cheese board that she creates.

GQ: Is it tough being away from her to shoot the show? Or is it just, like, your other favorite thing?

** Aaron Paul: **I love it. Bryan bought a place just a couple miles down the street from me. I bought a place in the second season. We’ve been out there for—on and off for close to six years since the pilot. I’ve explored every square inch of New Mexico, and it’s just a beautiful, magical place.

GQ: Something that gets overlooked sometimes with Breaking Bad is how funny it is.

** Aaron Paul: **Totally. But it works ’cause it’s not like Jesse’s trying to be funny. It’s just that the circumstances or the situations that he’s in tend to be kind of funny. Like, I think one of the first big laughs was when Jesse’s trying to melt a body in acid—that’s not really funny if you think about it.

GQ: Would you ever want to be in a funny-funny movie?

** Aaron Paul: **I would love to do that. But the tragedy of it all is that I’m not funny at all. I’m not. So if I try and be funny, it just comes off like—I look like an idiot.

GQ: Was "bitch" on the page? Or was that yours?

** Aaron Paul: **Every bitch is on the page; every yo is on the page. Sometimes I’ll add a bitch here and there or a couple of _yo_s. And yo is in my day-to-day vocabulary now. I just cannot get it out.

GQ: People relish the _bitch_es. It’s become a thing.

** Aaron Paul: **People are turning it into a drinking game.

GQ: How do you choose movies to watch?

** Aaron Paul: **It definitely goes through a filtering process, but if there’s a director I’m really interested in at the moment, I’ll usually try a bunch. You know, after seeing Bronson and then Drive, it was Nicolas Refn. I said, "My god, this guy is a god in my eyes when it comes to directors."

GQ: The reaction to Drive was a little bizarre.

** Aaron Paul: **It’s so weird. So many people just didn’t get it. It was my favorite movie last year. It really was. I remember looking at Bryan and saying, "You lucky bastard. What a great role." It’s something he’d never done before. And then Gosling. My god. That’s a kid that I’ve known forever.

GQ: You guys are about the same age, right?

** Aaron Paul: **Yeah, right around the same. I just really look up to the choices he makes. I think he’s an incredible talent and would love to work with him.

GQ: What other directors?

** Aaron Paul: **Rian Johnson’s fresh in mind. He’s just so brilliant and such an incredible writer. Or speaking of writer-slash-directors: Paul Thomas Anderson.

** Aaron Paul: **Not an idea. Maybe start accosting Paul Thomas Anderson. Seriously: turn this interview into a love letter to Paul Thomas Anderson, and kind of beg him to put me in a film. I don’t care if it’s as an extra, I’ll do whatever.

GQ: That was maybe the only fighting movie I’ve seen where I didn’t know what was going to happen. You didn’t know which brother was going to win.

** Aaron Paul: **I told my fiancée that it was pretty much a true story before we started watching it, and so she was just so invested. I was, like, starting to tense up toward the end of it—you know, when the brothers are about to fight, and I’m going like this, putting my hand over my face: "Oh my god, oh my god." She’s like, "What? Does something bad happen? Does one of them die?" I’m like, "Just watch. Just watch."

GQ: Are you a big sports fan?

** Aaron Paul: **Eh.

GQ: You’re not, like, courtside at Lakers games or anything like that.

** Aaron Paul: **Exactly, not at all. I’ve actually never been to a Lakers game.

GQ: That’s big-time! You should try and make that your thing. Like, Jack buys his season tickets in 1970; you just never go.

** Aaron Paul: **Exactly. I looked up to see what a Lakers ticket would be for the playoffs—you know, maybe take Lauren there on a date if they start winning. I’m just like the other fake Lakers fans: once they make it to the playoffs, I’m diehard.

GQ: At least you’re up-front with it. I don’t even think Jack goes to regular-season games anymore.

** Aaron Paul: **You know, Jack’s seats—I was just curious, not that I would buy them, to see what one near him might cost. How much do you think?

GQ: God, I don’t know.

** Aaron Paul: **Thirteen grand.

GQ: Ughh. Can’t you just call that stuff in?

** Aaron Paul: **Nah, I never call it in. Never. I can’t bring myself to do that sort of thing. Besides trying to get into the SNL season finale—

GQ: But I thought every actor did it. At least Entourage tells us it’s a thing.

** Aaron Paul: **Oh, Entourage.

GQ: What about Dodgers games?

** Aaron Paul: **Yeah, Dodgers games, but even moreso with the Angels. My girl—her dad has had tickets for forever. Actually: Do you know what the Rally Monkey is?

GQ: Of course.

** Aaron Paul: **That was my fiancée’s little brother, Liam. He would dress up as this monkey. Seven years old, the original human Rally Monkey.

GQ: Wait, that is huge.

** Aaron Paul: **Huge, yeah. Totally iconic. He was like, in the front float at Disneyland after the Angels won the World Series.

GQ: What’s funny with the "Ah, don’t tell me!"—and I was the same way—is that all the nerds who read the first book in 1996, or whatever, are sitting around going, "Really, you don’t know what happens?"

** Aaron Paul: **I know. It’s funny, ’cause George R.R. Martin, the writer of Game of Thrones, lives in Santa Fe. And so when we were shooting on location there a couple weeks ago, one of our writers, Peter Gould, went to lunch with him. He brought the first book, and he had it in his little satchel, and during the lunch Martin brought it up: "God, every person I sit down with is so crazy. I wrote these books so long ago, and everyone’s like, ’Will you sign this copy? Will you sign this copy?’" And so Peter had to sort of embarrassingly push the satchel out of sight so Martin wouldn’t know. In the end, he gave in anyway, and asked him to sign it.

GQ: Amazing. Do you know about his miniatures collection? Little figurines of the characters in the book? I guess fans ask him when the next book’s coming and he gets all fed up: "You’re not respecting what I’m trying to do with my miniatures collection!"

** Aaron Paul: **Wow, I love him. I want to go and visit his palace and look at his little dragons.

_At some point after a couple more beers, the waitress drops off the check, and Aaron Paul insists on paying. It’s a move I’m certain he’s putting on—interview subjects don’t pay—but he’s kinda goofy-militant about the whole thing, and I finally relinquish. _

GQ: That was silly—completely unnecessary.

** Aaron Paul: **Yeah, but you know what? It’s like, whenever I have meetings with directors and we’ll have lunches, the directors always pay, but I don’t know why that’s the case.

GQ: It’s like Lakers tickets, dude. C’mon! They want you there! They’re the ones who reap the benefits of showing you and Lauren on the JumboTron.

** Aaron Paul: **I don’t know. I just don’t like to ask for things.

GQ: What do you do when you’re in New York?

** Aaron Paul: **Last time, I saw Book of Mormon. It’s so unbelievable, but I could not believe how expensive tickets to that—

GQ: You paid for those, too!

** Aaron Paul: **You cannot get free plays. You can’t. I love that you’re so amazed that I pay for stuff. Whatever. I figure other people are paying for it, why shouldn’t I?

GQ: So Broadway shows. Or at least that one.

** Aaron Paul: **Totally. I noticed Conan O’Brien in the audience. I’m rarely starstruck, but I hold him on such a high pedestal—I just love that man. And so Lauren and I are standing outside, it’s kind of raining out, I’m like, "We have to accost him. We just have to." And then we kind of chicken out when he walks by and gets into his Suburban—his driver, you know, picks him up. And then we’re like, "Let’s just walk over there and watch him drive by." So we just walk down the street a little bit, and he starts driving by, and we’re like [he cranes his neck]—just so we can see him one more time, and then the car stops, and the back window rolls down, and we can’t see anything inside; it’s just so dark in there. And then all of a sudden, six-foot—how tall is he?

GQ: He’s 6’4" plus three inches of hair.

** Aaron Paul: **Exactly, with the hair. So this six-foot-seven man gets out of the car and just starts—runs over to Lauren and me in the rain. I’m just so shell-shocked. I can’t believe that this visual’s in front of me, happening right now. And then he just confessed his love of the show. I was just like, "Uhhhhhh." I couldn’t—I literally couldn’t speak. Then he offered us a ride to our hotel. We were just so shocked at what was going down that we said no, even though it was pouring rain and it was going to be impossible to get a cab.

GQ: What’s the big thing about you that no one’s dug up?

** Aaron Paul: **There’s a lot people don’t know.

GQ: Do you have four children?

** Aaron Paul: **Not four, but multiple children.

GQ: Are they all older than you?

** Aaron Paul: **Yes. All of my kids, all 17 of them, are much older than me. No... Well, I was born on my bathroom floor? My mother gave birth by herself and cut the umbilical cord herself. Yeah, I made the front page of the paper. My first picture ever was the front page.

GQ: All right, now that you’re sharing: Give us the juice. Seriously. What’s gonna happen this season?

** Aaron Paul: **Can’t do it. But I’ll say this: the cold open in the season premiere alone...shit is about to get crazy.